The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition

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Title: The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition

Author: Upton Sinclair

Release Date: August 7, 2005 [EBook #16470]

Language: English

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The Profits of Religion

An Essay in Economic Interpretation

By

UPTON SINCLAIR

CONTENTS

NEW YORK

VANGUARD PRESS

VANGUARD PRINTINGS

First—January, 1927

Second—April, 1927

Third—June, 1928

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

OFFERTORY

This book is a study of Supernaturalism from a new point of view—as a Source of Income and a Shield to Privilege. I have searched the libraries through, and no one has done it before. If you read it, you will see that it needed to be done. It has meant twenty-five years of thought and a year of investigation. It contains the facts.

I publish the book myself, so that it may be available at the lowest possible price. I am giving my time and energy, in return for one thing which you may give me—the joy of speaking a true word and getting it heard.

Note to fifth edition, 1926: The Profits of Religion was first published early in 1917. The present edition represents a sale of over 60,000 copies, without counting a dozen translations. In this edition a few errors have been corrected, but otherwise the book has not been changed. The reader will understand that references to the World War are of the date 1917, prior to America's entrance.

This book is the first of a series of volumes, an economic interpretation of culture, which now includes The Brass Check, The Goose-step, The Goslings, and Mammonart.

CONTENTS

Introductory

Bootstrap-lifting

Religion

Book One: The Church of the Conquerors

The Priestly Lie

The Great Fear

Salve Regina!

Fresh Meat

Priestly Empires

Prayer-wheels

The Butcher-Gods

The Holy Inquisition

Hell-fire

Book Two: The Church of Good Society

The Rain Makers

The Babylonian Fire-God

The Medicine-men

The Canonization of Incompetence

Gibson's Preservative

The Elders

Church History

Land and Livings

Graft in Tail

Bishops and Beer

Anglicanism and Alcohol

Dead Cats

Suffer Little Children

The Court-circular

Horn-blowing

Trinity Corporation

Spiritual Interpretation

Book Three: The Church of the Servant Girls

Charity

God's Armor

Thanksgivings

The Holy Roman Empire

Temporal Power

Knights of Slavery

Priests and Police

The Church Militant

The Church Triumphant

God in the Schools

The Menace

King Coal

The Unholy Alliance

Secret Service

Tax Exemption

Holy History

Das Centrum

Book Four: The Church of the Slavers

The Face of Caesar

Deutsehland ueber Alles

Der Tag

King Cotton

Witches and Women

Moth and Rust

To Lyman Abbott

The Octopus

The Industrial Shelley

The Outlook for Graft

Clerical Camouflage

The Jungle

Book Five: The Church of the Merchants

The Head Merchant

Herr Beeble

Holy Oil

Rhetorical Black-hanging

The Great American Fraud

Riches in Glory

Captivating Ideals

Spook Hunting

Running the Rapids

Birth Control

Sheep

Book Six: The Church of the Quacks

Tabula Rasa

The Book of Mormon

Holy Rolling

Bible Prophecy

Koreshanity

Mazdaznan

Black Magic

Mental Malpractice

Science and Wealth

New Nonsense

Dollars Want Me!

Spiritual Financiering

The Graft of Grace

Book Seven: The Church of the Social Revolution

Christ and Caesar

Locusts and Wild Honey

Mother Earth

The Soap Box

The Church Machine

The Church Redeemed

The Desire of Nations

The Knowable

Nature's Insurgent Son

The New Morality

Envoi

INDEX

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY

Bootstrap-lifting

Bootstrap-lifting? says the reader.

It is a vision I have seen: upon a vast plain, men and women are gathered in dense throngs, crouched in uncomfortable and distressing positions, their fingers hooked in the straps of their boots. They are engaged in lifting themselves; tugging and straining until they grow red in the face, exhausted. The perspiration streams from their foreheads, they show every symptom of distress; the eyes of all are fixed, not upon each other, nor upon their boot-straps, but upon the sky above. There is a look of rapture upon their faces, and now and then, amid grunts and groans, they cry out with excitement and triumph.

I approach one and say to him, Friend, what is this you are doing?

He answers, without pausing to glance at me, I am performing spiritual exercises. See how I rise?

But, I say, you are not rising at all!

Whereat he becomes instantly angry. You are one of the scoffers!

But, friend, I protest, don't you feel the earth under your feet?

You are a materialist!

But, friend, I can see—

You are without spiritual vision!

And so I move on among the sweating and groaning hordes. Being of a sympathetic turn of mind, I cannot help being distressed by the prevalence of this singular practice among so large a portion of the human race. How is it possible that none of them should suspect the futility of their procedure? Or can it really be that I am uncomprehending? That in some way they are actually getting off the ground, or about to get off the ground?

Then I observe a new phenomenon: a man gliding here and there among the bootstrap-lifters, approaching from the rear and slipping his hands into their pockets. The position of the spiritual exercisers greatly facilitates his work; their eyes being cast up to heaven, they do not see him, their thoughts being occupied, they do not heed him; he goes through their pockets at leisure, and transfers the contents to a bag he carries, and then moves on to the next victim. I watch him for a while, and finally approach and ask, What are you doing, sir?

He answers, I am picking pockets.

Oh, I say, puzzled by his matter-of-course tone. But—I beg pardon—are you a thief?

Oh, no, he answers, smilingly, I am the agent of the Wholesale Pickpockets' Association. This is Prosperity.

I see, I reply. And these people let you—

It is the law, he says. It is also the gospel.

I turn, following his glance, and observe another person approaching—a stately figure, clad in scarlet and purple robes, moving with slow dignity. Ha gazes about at the sweating and grunting hordes; now and then he stops and lifts his hands in a gesture of benediction, and proclaims in rolling tones, Blessed are the Bootstrap-lifters, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. He moves on, and after a bit stops and announces again, Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that cometh out of the mouth of the prophets and priests of Bootstrap-lifting.

Watching a while longer, I see this majestic one approach the agent of the Wholesale Pickpockets' Association. The agent greets him as a friend, and proceeds to transfer to the pockets of his capacious robes a generous share of the loot which he has collected. The majestic one does not cringe, nor does he make any effort to hide what is going on. On the contrary he cries aloud, It is more blessed to give than to receive! And again he cries, The laborer is worthy of his hire! And a third time he cries, yet more sternly, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's! And the Bootstrap-lifters pause long enough to answer: Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law! Then they renew their straining and tugging.

I step up, and in timid tones begin, Reverend sir, will you tell me by what right you take this wealth?

Instantly a frown comes upon his face, and he cries in a voice of thunder, Blasphemer! And all the Bootstrap-lifters desist from their lifting, and menace me with furious looks. There is a general call for a policeman of the Wholesale Pickpockets' Association; and so I fall silent, and slink away in the throng, and thereafter keep my thoughts to myself.

Over the vast plain I wander, observing a thousand strange and incredible and terrifying manifestations of the Bootstrap-lifting impulse. There is, I discover, a regular propaganda on foot; a long time ago—no man can recall how far back—the Wholesale Pickpockets made the discovery of the ease with which a man's pockets could be rifled while he was preoccupied with spiritual exercises, and they began offering prizes for the best essays in support of the practice. Now their propaganda is everywhere triumphant, and year by year we see an increase in the rewards and emoluments of the prophets and priests of the cult. The ground is covered with stately temples of various designs, all of which I am told are consecrated to Bootstrap-lifting. I come to where a group of people are occupied in laying the corner-stone of a new white marble structure; I inquire and am informed it is the First Church of Bootstrap-lifters, Scientist. As I stand watching, a card is handed to me, informing me that a lady will do my Bootstrap-lifting at five dollars per lift.

I go on to another building, which I am told is a library containing volumes in defense of the Bootstrap-lifters, published under the auspices of the Wholesale Pickpockets. I enter, and find endless vistas of shelves, also several thousand current magazines and papers. I consult these—for my legs have given out in the effort to visit and inspect all phases of the Bootstrap-lifting practice. I discover that hardly a week passes that some one does not start a new cult, or revive an old one; if I had a hundred life-times I could not know all the creeds and ceremonies, the services and rituals, the litanies and liturgies, the hymns, anthems and offertories of Bootstrap-lifting. There are the Holy Roman Bootstrap-lifters, whose priests are fed by Transubstantiation; the established Anglican Bootstrap-lifters, whose priests live by livings; the Baptist Bootstrap-lifters, whose preachers practice total immersion in Standard Oil. There are Yogi Bootstrap-lifters with flowing robes of yellow silk; Theosophist Bootstrap-lifters with green and purple auras; Mormon Bootstrap-lifters, Mazdaznan Bootstrap-lifters, Spiritualist and Spirit-Fruit, Millerite and Dowieite, Holy Roller and Holy Jumper, Come-to-glory negro, Billy Sunday base-ball and Salvation Army bass-drum Bootstrap-lifters. There are the thousand varieties of New Thought Bootstrap-lifters; the mystic and transcendentalist, Swedenborgian and Jacob Boehme Bootstrap-lifters; the Elbert Hubbard high-art Bootstrap-lifters with half a million magazinelets at two bits apiece; the uplift and optimist, the Ralph Waldo Trine and Orison Swett Marden Bootstrap-lifters with a hundred thousand volumes at one dollar per volume. There are the Platonist and Hegelian and Kantian professors of collegiate metaphysical Bootstrap-lifting at several thousand dollars per year each. There are the Nietzschean Bootstrap-lifters, who lift themselves to the Superman, and the art-for-art's-sake, neo-Pagan Bootstrap-lifters, who lift themselves down to the Ape.

Excepting possibly the last-mentioned group, the priests of all these cults, the singers, shouters, prayers and exhorters of Bootstrap-lifting have as their distinguishing characteristic that they do very little lifting at their own bootstraps, and less at any other man's. Now and then you may see one bend and give a delicate tug, of a purely symbolical character: as when the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Bootstrap-lifters comes once a year to wash the feet of the poor; or when the Sunday-school Superintendent of the Baptist Bootstrap-lifters shakes the hand of one of his Colorado mine-slaves. But for the most part the priests and preachers of Bootstrap-lifting walk haughtily erect, many of them being so swollen with prosperity that they could not reach their bootstraps if they wanted to. Their role in life is to exhort other men to more vigorous efforts at self-elevation, that the agents of the Wholesale Pickpockets' Association may ply their immemorial role with less chance of interference.

Religion

The reader, offended by this raillery, asks if I mean to impugn the sincerity of all who preach the supremacy of the soul. No; I admit the honesty of the heroes and madmen of history. All I ask of the preacher is that he shall make an effort to practice his doctrine. Let him be tormented like Don Quixote; let him go mad like Nietzsche; let him stand upon a pillar and be devoured by worms like Simeon Stylites—on these terms I grant to any dreamer the right to hold himself above economic science.

Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself. He is humiliated by his simian ancestry, and tries to deny his animal nature, to persuade himself that he is not limited by its weaknesses nor concerned in its fate. And this impulse may be harmless, when it is genuine. But what are we to say when we see the formulas of heroic self-deception made use of by unheroic self-indulgence? What are we to say when we see asceticism preached to the poor by fat and comfortable retainers of the rich? What are we to say when we see idealism become hypocrisy, and the moral and spiritual heritage of mankind twisted to the knavish purposes of class-cruelty and greed? What I say is—Bootstrap-lifting!

It is the fate of many abstract words to be used in two senses, one good and the other bad. Morality means the will to righteousness, or it means Anthony Comstock; democracy means the rule of the people, or it means Tammany Hall. And so it is with the word Religion. In its true sense Religion is the most fundamental of the soul's impulses, the impassioned love of life, the feeling of its preciousness, the desire to foster and further it. In that sense every thinking man must be religious; in that sense Religion is a perpetually self-renewing force, the very nature of our being. In that sense I have no thought of assailing it, I would make clear that I hold it beyond assailment.

But we are denied the pleasure of using the word in that honest sense, because of another which has been given to it. To the ordinary man Religion means, not the soul's longing for growth, the hunger and thirst after righteousness, but certain forms in which this hunger has manifested itself in history, and prevails today throughout the world; that is to say, institutions having fixed dogmas and revelations, creeds and rituals, with an administering caste claiming supernatural sanction. By such institutions the moral strivings of the race, the affections of childhood and the aspirations of youth are made the prerogatives and stock in trade of ecclesiastical hierarchies. It is the thesis of this book that Religion in this sense is a source of income to parasites, and the natural ally of every form of oppression and exploitation.

If by my jesting at Bootstrap-lifting I have wounded some dear prejudice of the reader, let me endeavor to speak in a more persuasive voice. I am a man who has suffered, and has seen the suffering of others; I have devoted my life to analyzing the causes of the suffering, to find out if it be necessary and fore-ordained, or if by any chance there be a way of escape for future generations. I have found that the latter is the case; the suffering is needless, it can with ease and certainty be banished from the earth. I know this with the knowledge of science—in the same way that the navigator of a ship knows his latitude and longitude, and the point of the compass to which he must steer in order to reach the port.

Come, reader, let us put aside prejudice, and the terrors of the cults of the unknown. The power which made us has given us a mind, and the impulse to its use; let us see what can be done with it to rid the earth of its ancient evils. And do not be troubled if at the outset this book seems to be entirely destructive. I assure you that I am no crude materialist, I am not so shallow as to imagine that our race will be satisfied with a barren rationalism. I know that the old symbols came out of the heart of man because they corresponded to certain needs of the heart of man. I know that new symbols will be found, corresponding more exactly to the needs of our time. If here I set to work to tear down an old and ramshackle building, it is not from blind destructfulness, but as an architect who means to put a new and sounder structure in its place. Before we part company I shall submit the blue print of that new home of the spirit.

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE

The Church of the Conquerors

I saw the Conquerors riding by

With trampling feet of horse and men:

Empire on empire like the tide

Flooded the world and ebbed again;

A thousand banners caught the sun,

And cities smoked along the plain,

And laden down with silk and gold

And heaped up pillage groaned the wain.

Kemp.

The Priestly Lie

When the first savage saw his hut destroyed by a bolt of lightning, he fell down upon his face in terror. He had no conception of natural forces, of laws of electricity; he saw this event as the act of an individual intelligence. To-day we read about fairies and demons, dryads and fauns and satyrs, Wotan and Thor and Vulcan, Freie and Flora and Ceres, and we think of all these as pretty fancies, play-products of the mind; losing sight of the fact that they were originally meant with entire seriousness—that not merely did ancient man believe in them, but was forced to believe in them, because the mind must have an explanation of things that happen, and an individual intelligence was the only explanation available. The story of the hero who slays the devouring dragon was not merely a symbol of day and night, of summer and winter; it was a literal explanation of the phenomena, it was the science of early times.

Men imagined supernatural powers such as they could comprehend. If the lightning god destroyed a hut, obviously it must be because the owner of the hut had given offense; so the owner must placate the god, using those means which would be effective in the quarrels of men—presents of roast meats and honey and fresh fruits, of wine and gold and jewels and women, accompanied by friendly words and gestures of submission. And when in spite of all things the natural evil did not cease, when the people continued to die of pestilence, then came the opportunity for hysterical or ambitious persons to discover new ways of penetrating the mind of the god. There would be dreamers of dreams and seers of visions and hearers of voices; readers of the entrails of beasts and interpreters of the flight of birds; there would be burning bushes and stone tablets on mountain-tops, and inspired words dictated to aged disciples on lonely islands. There would arise special castes of men and women, learned in these sacred matters; and these priestly castes would naturally emphasize the importance of their calling, would hold themselves aloof from the common herd, endowed with special powers and entitled to special privileges. They would interpret the oracles in ways favorable to themselves and their order; they would proclaim themselves friends and confidants of the god, walking with him in the night-time, receiving his messengers and angels, acting as his deputies in forgiving offenses, in dealing punishments and in receiving gifts. They would become makers of laws and moral codes. They would wear special costumes to distinguish them, they would go through elaborate ceremonies to impress their followers, employing all sensuous effects, architecture and sculpture and painting, music and poetry and dancing, candles and incense and bells and gongs

And storied windows richly dight,

Casting a dim religious light.

There let the pealing organ blow,

To the full-voiced choir below,

In service high and anthem clear,

As may with sweetness through mine ear

Dissolve me into ecstacies,

And bring all heaven before mine eyes.

So builds itself up, in a thousand complex and complicated forms, the Priestly Lie. There are a score of great religions in the world, each with scores or hundreds of sects, each with its priestly orders, its complicated creed and ritual, its heavens and hells. Each has its thousands or millions or hundreds of millions of true believers; each damns all the others, with more or less heartiness—and each is a mighty fortress of Graft.

There will be few readers of this book who have not been brought up under the spell of some one of these systems of Supernaturalism; who have not been taught to speak with respect of some particular priestly order, to thrill with awe at some particular sacred rite, to seek respite from earthly woes in some particular ceremonial spell. These things are woven into our very fibre in childhood; they are sanctified by memories of joys and griefs, they are confused with spiritual struggles, they become part of all that is most vital in our lives. The reader who wishes to emancipate himself from their thrall will do well to begin with a study of the beliefs and practices of other sects than his own—a field where he is free to observe and examine without fear of sacrilege. Let him look into Madame Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine, or her Isis Unveiled—encyclopedias of the fantastic inventions which terror and longing have wrung out of the tortured soul of man. Here are mysteries and solemnities, charms and spells, illuminations and transmigrations, angels and demons, guides, controls and masters—all of which it is permissible to refuse to support with gifts. Let the reader then go to James Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions, and realize how many billions of humans have lived and died in the solemn certainty that their welfare on earth and in heaven depended upon their accepting certain ideas and practicing certain rites, all mutually exclusive and incompatible, each damning the others and the followers of the others. So gradually the realization will come to him that the test of a doctrine about life and its welfare must be something else than the fact that one was born to it.

The Great Fear

It was not the fault of primitive man that he was ignorant, nor that his ignorance made him a prey to dread. The traces of his mental suffering will inspire in us only pity and sympathy; for Nature is a grim school-mistress, and not all her lessons have yet been learned. We have a right to scorn and anger only when we see this dread being diverted from its true function, a stimulus to a search for knowledge, and made into a means of clamping down ignorance upon the mind of the race. That this has been the deliberate policy of institutionalized Religion no candid student can deny.

The first thing brought forth by the study of any religion, ancient or modern, is that it is based upon Fear, born of it, fed by it—and that it cultivates the source from which its nourishment is derived. The fear of divine anger, says Prof. Jastrow, runs as an undercurrent through the entire religious literature of Babylonia and Assyria. In the words of Tabi-utul-Enlil, King of ancient Nippur:

Who is there that can grasp the will of the gods in heaven?

The plan of a god is full of mystery—who can understand it?

He who is still alive at evening is dead the next morning.

In an instant he is cast into grief, in a moment he is crushed.

And that cry might be duplicated from almost any page of the Hebrew scriptures: the only difference being that the Hebrews combined all their fears into one Great Fear. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, we are told by Solomon of the thousand wives; and the Psalmist repeats it. Dominion and fear are with Him, cries Job. How then can any man be just before God? Or how can he be clean that is born of a woman? Behold, even the moon hath no brightness, and the stars are not pure in His sight: How much less man, that is a worm? And the son of man, which is a worm? He goes on, in his lyrical rapture, Sheol is naked before Him, and Destruction hath no covering.... The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at His rebuke. ... The thunder of His power who can understand? That all this is some of the world's great poetry does not in the least alter the fact that it is an abasement of the soul, an hysterical perversion of the facts of life, and a preparation of the mind for the seeds of Priestcraft.

The Book of Job has been called a Wisdom-drama: and what is the denouement of this drama, what is ancient Hebrew wisdom's last word about life? Wherefore I abhor myself, says Job, and repent in dust and ashes. The poor fellow has done nothing; we have been told at the beginning that he was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil. But the Sabeans and the Chaldeans rob him, and the fire of God falls from heaven and burns up his sheep and his servants, and a great wind from the wilderness kills his sons and daughters; and then his body becomes covered with boils—a phenomenon caused in part by worry, and the consequent nervous indigestion, but mainly by excess of starch and deficiency of mineral salts in the diet. Job, however, has never heard of the fasting cure for disease, and so he takes him a potsherd to scrape himself withal, and he sits among the ashes—a highly unsanitary procedure enforced by his religious ritual. So naturally he feels like a worm, and abhors himself, and cries out: I know that Thou canst do all things, and that no purpose of Thine can be restrained. By which utter, unreasoning humility he succeeds in appeasing the Great Fear, and his friends make a sacrifice of seven bullocks and seven rams—a feast for a whole templeful of priests—and then the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.... And after this Job lived an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons and his sons' sons, even four generations.

You do not have